What is intermediate machinery?

What types of machinery and explosives do coal companies use during mountaintop removal mining?

• I know the basics - clear cut the trees, put explosives in the mountains, blow the mountain up, separate coal from waste, fill up valleys and then plant some grass. What I want to know if more about the machinery used - some sites talk about a "dragline," but don't have any more info than "it is used in MTR" What kind of explosives are used? How do they gather/separate the coal from the mining waste?

• Answer:

  The explosive is a slurry of Diesel fuel and potassium nitrate that is pumped into the drilled holes for surface mining. They use Semtex and variations of it to do underground mining because of how fast the explosion is. As far as separating there is a very small amount of "other materials" when you are mining coal. It exists in large quantities at a pure rate. There is almost no need to separate anything from the haul.